


there's a dinosaur named Oskar in this

by hedgebitch



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Berlin (City), Family Bonding, Gen, Museums, Vacation, sibling antics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26957431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgebitch/pseuds/hedgebitch
Summary: In which custody arrangements are not discussed even a little bit, and seven people not related by blood travel several thousand miles to look at a stolen fossil, but like, a really tall one.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	there's a dinosaur named Oskar in this

Being a vigilante is not super compatible with being a heavy sleeper. So it’s something of a surprise that Tim wakes up not to footsteps in the hall, or to shouting from the general direction of the stairs or the master suite—Dick in particular is fond of picking fights with Bruce at eleven in the morning—but to Jason barking orders at him from just inside the doorway of his bedroom.

“Pack your bags, dork, we’re going to Berlin.”

“Wassimbern” Tim attempts to ask, and is rewarded with a duffel bag to the face for his efforts.

“Should be back by Monday morning but better pack for a week. You know the drill.”

By the time Tim manages to actually register what’s just happened, Jason is nearly halfway out the door, and Tim has to scramble into a sitting position to yell out after him.

“Hey! Get back here! What’s in Berlin?”

“The tallest mounted Brachiosaurus in the world,” Cass says, from the foot of the bed where she’s apparently been standing this whole time.

Duke seems uncharacteristically unfazed by missing his Friday classes without any word of warning, until Tim questions him in the airport and he admits to being wildly unprepared for a calc test. He’s worried about coming off too suss, so Tim offers a bit of his own advice—tell Bruce he’s absolutely crushed about missing it and unrepentantly play both sides.

Duke opts to trade seats with Dick and sit in a row with Bruce instead of Tim for the duration of their flight to Germany, and Tim immediately regrets sharing valuable information with someone smart enough to snitch.

The flight is pretty full. Selina handwaves their seating arrangements as a result of United’s random selection and day-of scarcity, but Tim’s fairly confident something’s up with Selina and Cass getting seats in first class, with Jason separated from anyone else in an exit row, and with Bruce getting a middle seat in economy.

It’s late when they arrive in Berlin, and late even for them by the time they’re checked in at the hotel Tim suspects Selina was in control of booking.

Saturday morning sees Tim staring up at what is, in fact, not the tallest mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton in the world. Caught up in an irrational fear of it gaining sentience and eating him—irrational not due to the likelihood of it coming to life, but rather to the likelihood of a reanimated herbivore choosing Tim as his first meal in millennia—he refrains from hanging around long enough to tell Cass it’s actually a Giraffatitan.

It’s a welcome reprieve watching Jason opt to head from the atrium and down a corridor, followed closely by Dick and Duke, who seem to be spending more time joking about the exhibits than reading about them. Tim ends up following behind them after a minute, and is surprised when Bruce falls into step with him, deviating from his preferred museum pace to match Tim’s.

“Hey,” he can hear Duke saying to Jason a few cases ahead. “Hey, I bet you feel really at home here, right?”

Jason sees the trap laid out for him and chooses to take the bait. “Why, because I’m a fossil?”

“No,” Duke says immediately, then starts laughing too hard at his own joke to finish it.

“Cause you’re kinda ugly,” Dick finishes for him, shooting a glance at the reimagined animal in the exhibit in front of Duke and patting Jason on the shoulder with false sympathy.

Tim tilts his head, trying to decide whether or not he can see it while Jason attempts to splutter out a retort through his own laughter.

“Are you really imposing modern standards of beauty on a prehistoric squid?” is the best he can come up with.

Duke sticks his tongue out and Jason pokes his shoulder in response, and before long the two have resorted to a gentle but wholly immature wrestling match to decide—Tim’s not actually sure what’s at stake here. Jason’s prettiness?—and that’s what finally draws Bruce’s attention away from the plaque below the exhibit he and Tim are standing in front of.

“Jason, cut it out,” Bruce calls out sharply, and glances woefully back down at the plaque.

“There’s a translation error,” he tells Tim quietly, as Jason yells back, “Why do you always assume everything’s my fault?”

Tim knows about the translation error. He debates telling Bruce he picked up on it too, then decides Bruce doesn’t really care one way or the other about his German proficiency. Also, his brothers have gotten louder, and people are starting to stare.

“Are you a legal adult or not, Jason, quit shoving Duke and—”

“He started it!” Jason insists.

The urge to point out that technically, Jason’s face started it, is almost too strong for Tim to resist. Luckily, Dick gives in before Tim can, to Bruce’s utter dismay.

“I cannot emphasize enough how little I care who started it,” Bruce tells them, just as Selina and Cass round the corner from the previous exhibit.

They’ve been hanging back this whole time, whispering to each other about something decidedly unrelated to natural history. Bruce is either unconcerned or has resolved himself not to care, and Tim is a little too afraid of whatever they’re plotting to investigate it himself. Girl talk is better recognized as a threat in this family.

“Ooooh,” Selina taunts. “Someone’s in trouble.”

A young student excuses herself in German as she passes swiftly through their group, with heavy “what the fuck” undertones and judgement in her eyes. Dick, nonplussed, cheerfully apologizes to her.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Bruce mutters to himself, and Tim pulls out his phone and pretends to text while he snapchats Steph a video from his front facing camera, letting the audio of the ensuing argument over whether Bruce was using a singular or a plural “you” speak for itself.

Jason begs out of dinner, expressing intent to “see a…man about a…dog,” with an expression so wildly suspicious that no one in their group can decipher if he’s referring to Red Hood business or if he’s ditching them for some guy he’s been texting since he connected to the airport wifi. Bruce pretends to be unbothered, and by the time they’re actually seated in the restaurant with drinks and food, Tim almost believes it.

Duke and Cass are caught up in some sort of elaborate game of their own invention involving the other patrons of the restaurant, with a point system so complex Tim thinks Steph might be arbitrating from back home in Gotham. Selina and Dick have both been in Berlin before—they alternate between discussing past visits and attempting to decipher the rules of the game to hop in. Bruce watches all of this with a quiet, distant smile, and Tim watches Bruce.

A couple seated at a table towards the outer edge of the room receives their foie gras appetizer to split.

“Seventeen points,” Duke says triumphantly, which Dick and Selina echo to each other with palpable confusion.

“Back to square one,” Dick mutters, and Selina pulls a pen out of her purse to start scribbling on her napkin.

“What did Cass get for the risotto at your six?” she whispers to Dick, and Tim’s just fast enough to catch the grin Duke shoots Cass.

Satisfied that the rest of his family is sufficiently occupied by antics if not by their entrees, Tim decides to take a leap and ask Bruce the question that’s been weighing on him since he figured out the trip itinerary. He waits a second, just to make sure Bruce is paying attention to him and not Dick, then shoots.

“When Cass said the world’s largest mounted Brachiosaurus was in Berlin, I kind of thought that was more of a nonsequitur than the point of interest.”

“Hmm?” Bruce replies, as if he wasn’t damn well aware of Tim’s pre-speech stare. He gives in nice and easy, though, when he realizes there’s no way out of it.

“Jason found out a couple months ago that I never got around to actually seeing the exhibit. Guess he was, uh. Saving it.”

Tim resists the urge to frown as he attempts to put those particular pieces together. Their seats on the flight over do make a bit more sense now, though.

“He seemed awfully eager to skip dinner for a mastermind.”

This warrants Bruce’s concern—tension, even phantom tension, between Jason and Tim always does.

“It does seem likely that his interest in chiropterology had just as much say in the plans as his interest in paleontology.”

Tim takes a moment to mentally translate that: either Bruce is covering blindly (uncharacteristic of him for anyone in the world except Jason Todd), or Jason’s taking care of something Bat-approved. Weird.

“Well,” Tim says, like it’s the end of a sentence, then thinks twice and figures he’d better make his stance clear before Bruce goes getting any ideas. “Just so you know, Diplodocusman really doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Bruce chuckles, gives an actual honest-to-god chuckle, which gives Tim the fuel he needs to push just one boundary further.

“You should come back here,” he tells Bruce, acutely aware that no matter how the rest of the table reacts, they’ll all be listening the moment they register what he’s said, “with Damian, I mean. I bet he’d like the museum.”

Bruce blinks away his surprise, and miraculously doesn’t shut down.

“Some of the exhibits would make nice art studies,” he acknowledges.

“And they’d be harder to take home than any zoo animal,” Dick jumps in to point out, taking the weight of conversation off Tim’s shoulders like Atlas taking the sky back from Hercules.

“You did good, kid,” Selina tells Tim on their way out of the restaurant.

Tim goes to reply and is cut off by Dick yelling loudly in melodramatic anguish—probably having just discovered the rules of the game, if Duke and Cass cackling is anything to go by. And he loves them, loves this weird thrifted family he blackmailed his way into, but—

“Are we gonna have to go on vacation every time Talia gets a week with Damian?”

Selina scoffs. “Fuck, I hope not.”

**Author's Note:**

> why did jason leave halfway through? because i couldnt think of a single reason to get him to attend a family dinner. why is everyone so ooc? because i can’t fuckin write tim’s perspective. what are the rules of cass and duke’s game? actually that one i know the answer to, but feel free to guess in the comments and if you come up with something better, i’ll pick that instead
> 
> as always hmu on tumblr @[barbarawilson](https://barbarawilson.tumblr.com/) with any further questions/comments/complaints


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